One approach for creating and maintaining a secured, protected, or isolated execution environment is to employ a secure enclave to protect code and data. A secure enclave is a protected area within an application's address space that is not accessible by other applications. A processor having the secure enclave capabilities prevents access to the enclave memory region (i.e., the protected area defined in the application's address space) by other software even if such access is attempted by higher-privileged software such as system software including the operating system and the virtual machine monitor (VMM).